


Sher Trek Episode 1 Preview Excerpt: from "A Study in Darkness"

by CaresaToland



Series: Sher Trek Episode Excerpts [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sherlock (TV) Fusion, Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-20 07:27:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10657767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaresaToland/pseuds/CaresaToland
Summary: A short excerpt from the first full episode of the "Sher Trek" miniseries for falltvseasonsherlock.tumblr.com 's Miniseries April."Captain John Watson and Enterprise are ordered to Janus VI, where a series of mysterious killings have halted production of the vital mineral pergium. But Watson’s orders to get the mining facility up and running aren’t made any simpler by his brilliant new First Officer’s stubborn insistence that the deaths aren’t what they seem — or by the discovery of the near-genocide of a hitherto unknown alien species. Watson must now risk his new command on the deductions of a regulations-averse Vulcan and the chance that if the humans in this situation won’t see sense, maybe the aliens will… "





	Sher Trek Episode 1 Preview Excerpt: from "A Study in Darkness"

> ...It had to be John’s imagination that the air around them was getting hotter, stuffier. _Not possible… at least not yet._ But there was always the possibility that the facility’s reactor, already well along in the process of going supercritical, might decide to get ahead of itself and make a fool of his Chief Engineer… not to mention all the rest of them. _It’ll poison half the planet,_ Vanderberg had said.  John grimaced. _But not before it melts this bit of it to superheated slag and blows everything else for kilometers around sky-high…_
> 
> The predictable adrenaline-fueled shiver went down his back, but he had no time for it now. Vanderberg and the half-dozen or so of the mining facility’s people who’d elected to stay behind after the general evacuation were gathering around him in the tunnel now, waiting for orders.
> 
> “Right,” John said when he was clear that everyone they’d been waiting for was here. “Team up with the _Enterprise_ security personnel—they’re better armed than you. Keep someone in sight at all times.” He turned to the Janus VI facility chief. “Vanderberg, take two men. Go through that tunnel there.” John pointed. “Rendezvous with Commander Giotto and his security detail. Mr. Appel, and the rest of you men, go through there—” He indicated a different tunnel. “Link up with Lieutenant Osborne’s group. Mr. Sh’lok and I will control the operation from a central point. That’s all.”
> 
> Off the miners went in their various directions, leaving the Captain and Sh’lok alone in the dim corridor. John turned to his First Officer and saw him looking unusually still and intense: listening. “Mr. Sh’lok?
> 
> “Captain,” Sh’lok said softly, “we are being watched.”
> 
> John glanced around. “Are you sure?” he murmured. “Intuition?” _Because who knows what senses he’s got that he doesn’t think to tell us about? Or know how to? Might as well call it that…_
> 
> Sh’lok shook his head. “No, sir,” he said. “We’re being watched.”
> 
> When a Vulcan said something so nakedly declaratory, there was no option to take it as anything but fact. Together they started to make their way down the tunnel in which they stood.
> 
> Sh’lok had activated his tricorder and was checking it every fifty paces or so. After a few minutes he paused, several meters away from a spot in which their own tunnel forked. “Captain,” he said, “fresh readings within the hour.” He gestured right and left with his phaser. “In each of these tunnels.”
> 
> John nodded. “The chart says both of these tunnels converge a few thousand yards further. I’ll take the left. You take the right.”
> 
> “Should we separate?” Sh’lok said.
> 
> John gave him a resigned sort of _Do we have a choice?_ look. “Two tunnels,” he said, “two of us…” He shrugged. “We separate.”
> 
> And John started down the left-hand tunnel. As he went he noted without comment the Vulcan’s briefly raised eyebrow, and walked steadily on as if he couldn’t hear that Sh’lok, watching him, didn’t move until John’s tunnel curved enough that he could no longer be seen. 
> 
> His tunnel was one that had been cut by the miners through the softly glittering cobalt-shaded stone that characterized this part of the facility. Fairly quickly the miners’ work terminated in what would have been a dead end, but the tunnel continued onward along the same line in the form of one of the uncannily-perfect cylindrical tunnels that were also all through here. It was low, no more than a meter and a half high, and John had to get down and make his way along half-bent over.
> 
> Shortly, though, that tunnel came out into a wider space that looked like a small cavern or cavelet that natural forces had produced in the stone—one that showed few signs of the miners’ tools, with only an occasional piece of equipment discarded on the relatively smooth floor.
> 
> John straightened up again and moved cautiously into the space, looking around. His eye immediately fell on quite a few things that had nothing to do with the miners. He paused, pulled out his communicator; the chirp of it echoed. “Mr. Sh’lok—”
> 
> The reply was immediate. “Yes, Captain.”
> 
> “I’ve found a whole layer of these silicon nodules of yours,” John said, moving in among them. “Hundreds of them.” They lay scattered around the floor, some perched up on ledges, others piled up against the walls. John was intrigued by the variations in their colours; they weren’t all the soft mauve of the one in Vanderberg’s office, but ranged from pale pearly-white or dove-grey shades through deeper hues of rose or gold or soft green-blue.
> 
> “Indeed?” Sh’lok said. “I find that most illuminating, Captain. Be absolutely certain you do not damage any of them.”
> 
> _He keeps saying things like that. And then not saying why!_ But John had been learning that this was one of Sh’lok’s quirks. Sometimes from uncertainty (not that he would ever admit that freely), sometimes from what looked like a secret pleasure in others’ reactions, Sh’lok would do everything he could to present a theory in its entirety rather than in half-assembled scraps. _Right now, though, even scraps would be welcome!_ “Explain.”
> 
> “Only a theory I have—” Sh’lok said.
> 
> John was in the act of rolling his eyes (because by now he knew the sound of his stubborn Vulcan getting ready to stonewall him again) when his gaze caught something it might not have otherwise—something moving, something in the shadows of the cavern; and then something else tall and massive that was pitching toward him. Instantly John flung himself backwards out of its way, rolling aside as he did to avoid a few of the silicon nodules that he might have fallen on otherwise.
> 
> Not far from him, though, at the far side of the cavern things came down— one of the rough pillars that had supported that side of the low roof, toppling sideways and dislodging more chunks of rock from the walls nearby as it fell. Stones and rubble crashed and scattered deafeningly all around. Dust flew up in clouds.
> 
> “Captain,” said Sh’lok’s voice from the communicator, alarmed. “Are you all right?” And then, much more urgently: “John? _John!”_
> 
> Silence…

**Author's Note:**

> The full-length episode "Sher Trek: A Study in Darkness" will be published here at AO3 on April 20, 2017. Subsequent episodes will be published on April 27, May 4, and May 11.
> 
> Please check caresatoland.tumblr.com for more information about the "Sher Trek" Pilot Miniseries.


End file.
